4.4 Alexander Goes Out on Friday Night and Comes Home on Saturday Morning

I.

A woman is fussing with her daughter’s jacket. The daughter is in hysterics because an enormous turkey is menacing her. The turkey is so fat it has a belabored walk. Its feathers are a bright, cool white. It belabors toward her, probably hoping she will feed it. The girl screams, It’s coming to get me. I assume the bird is not a heritage–that is, I assume that though it is allowed to walk free and accept feed from autumn visitors to the farm, and that its fat ass will grow old and die of natural causes, it comes from a stock bred to become unsustainably meaty as quickly as possible before being beheaded. I want to touch it, but it might have turkey fleas or other parasites.

My grandmother used to keep chickens by the garden. She got rid of them a few years ago, after the avian flu scare. It’s just as well. Though I enjoyed feeding them grass, they were malicious, hateful creatures.

II.

The next morning, a woman with her face pressed against a gate of wrought iron bars begins hollering “We Shall Overcome.” She seems to be offering support to the clutch of tents in the middle of Harvard Yard, but they are so far away it is doubtful that any of the students notice. Since the Occupy Harvard students set up shop, the campus has gone into lockdown: every individual entering Harvard’s main campus has to present Harvard ID, no exceptions. All but a handful of entrances are locked, and police officers are stationed at every opening. Apparently fench-jumpers have been arrested. Professors are livid. I assume this woman is not part of the Harvard community, or she probably would have gone into Harvard Yard to talk to protesters herself. But for all I know this undignified spectacle might be the point. Perhaps whether or not the students heard her is incidental.

I am walking to the train station. I have to go home, pick up the jacket I’m mailing back to Sara, and run to the post office before it closes at 1pm. I am wearing a peacoat. Strangers on the street have complimented this peacoat, though I don’t think it’s anything special.

III.

I sit at a small square table and  pick at a coffee cake muffintop. A sad sack walks toward me. It occurs to me that now I’m able to tell at a glance whether a pair of men’s jeans is cheap or expensive. The fit in the thigh, the appearance of the material, and the way the fabric falls at the knee are taken into account.

IV.

In Genesis, which is the first book of the Old Testament, Adam and Eve are driven from the paradisiacal Garden of Eden after a serpent tricks them into eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s generally accepted that this lapse, be it metaphorical or historical, was erotic. I personally think such a reading is reductive and, finally, damaging.

V.

There’s a French adjective that means something like “predisposed to secretiveness for its own sake.” The word carries a value judgment: the idea is that the secrets are petty, and the pleasure taken from nursing them is a mean, contemptible one. I came across the word once but can’t remember it.